A Montgomery County judge has placed on probation the boy who poisoned two classmates at Upper Perkiomen High School last month, Assistant District Attorney Sharon Giamporcaro said Wednesday.

Judge Bernard Moore did so Friday over the objections of the district attorney's office, Giamporcaro said. Prosecutors argued that Shane Esterly, 14, of 7894 Sigmund Road, Hereford Township, should be incarcerated for three months.

"These kids were hospitalized for eight days," Giamporcaro said. Esterly "needs to be held accountable."

Esterly, who has been expelled from school, Giamporcaro said, entered the equivalent of a guilty plea Dec. 22 in Montgomery County Juvenile Court. The two counts of aggravated assault he pleaded to carried a possible sentence of four years.

By entering the plea, Esterly admitted making two classmates seriously ill Dec. 9 by slipping potassium dichromate, a potentially lethal laboratory chemical, into a soda bottle they were sharing.

Luckily, Giamporcaro said Tuesday, the victims -- Casey Horan, 14, and an unidentified 14-year-old boy -- ingested less than a teaspoon each of the chemical, which was being used in a science class lesson about solubility. "One teaspoon is uniformly fatal," she said.

Giamporcaro said Esterly "seemed very remorseful for what he did," but his crime was "too serious" for probation.

Dave Horan, whose daughter was one of the victims, agreed. He said Esterly should have at least gotten counseling and some time in a reform school.

"He got off," Horan said. "He gets to sleep in his own bed while I have to worry whether my daughter is going to get cancer in five years."

On the day Esterly made his plea, defense attorney Henry Crocker said his client was friendly with the victims and that the poisoning was a case of a prank that went terribly wrong.

Giamporcaro said at that hearing that Esterly saw both of his victims get sick but said nothing to school authorities. One vomited in the hallway after class and the other became ill in the next class. He admitted his actions only after being confronted by a school principal, who had heard from another student that Esterly might have played a role in their illness, she said.